Copyright 2007-All Rights Reserved
Indiana, in the heart of the Midwest, is shaped like a boot. Bloomington, which is home to Indiana University, is up the road a piece from Evansville, which is at the southwestern quarter of the state: In its boot heel. Remembering Evansville is remembering summer. Summer and banana-cream sunrises. Summer gathering her oven-fired skirts around her as the heat begins to bake you even before morning barely begins. In my memory, Evansville will always be Willie Taylor’s barbeque, Bill’s homemade Chow Chow, Allen’s Lounge, The Paradise, Lincoln and Kentucky Avenues, the University of Evansville (first named Evansville College), Posey County melons, biting into a home-grown tomato, eating fresh-caught blue gills, stopping to watch barges and motor boats plow across the bosom of the Ohio River. Evansville will always be summer. Summer and cornfields roasting under August flame. Summer and vermillion sunsets. I landed in Evansville, which sits on a bend of the meandering Ohio River, after undergrad and grad school at Indiana University. Back then, in 1967, it was a retiring, mid-sized city where ten percent of the 200,000 population was Black. I remember there being one building that might have passed muster as a skyscraper—the Old National Bank, approximately twenty stories high. And there were three newspapers (I wrote a feature column for The Evansville Courier), one four-year college, an Indiana State University extension campus, one modest-sized museum, two exterior shopping centers, one small airport, one bus station, and no passenger train depot. You could drive in a couple of hours on two-lane highways to Louisville, Kentucky, to Cincinnati, Ohio, or to St. Louis, Missouri. If you wanted to go to Indianapolis, which is in the middle of the state, it would take a bit more drive time. The thing I remember right off about Evansville is that the streets there had German names that I couldn’t pronounce. (The spelling and pronunciation were quite foreign to me, being from the South and all where the names are quite vanilla-plain.) The original settlers that turned Evansville into more than just a river landing for trade goods were, I found out later, German, Irish, Jewish, and British immigrants. And that included, according to the history books, people on the run from war or famine or the law, people kicked out of Europe for being who they were, and poor folk trudging west to find a home.
When I first visited Evansville, in the mid sixties, I’d been invited for the weekend by a fellow student who’d lived there all of her life. As we drove into town that afternoon, I almost ran over Ron Glass (the actor) who leaped out into Lincoln Avenue (which was the main drag in the Black part of town) as if he had bumpers on his behind. He flagged us down and bounded over to the driver’s side of my car. He asked whose car we were riding in. Ron, a student himself at Evansville College, stared at me while I was being introduced, nodded his recognition of me, then proceeded to chatter away. At the time, I thought he was fiercely handsome, brash and a little overbearing. (When it comes to being brash and overbearing, I’d have to say it takes one to know one.) God only knows what he thought of me though we soon got to be friends. Of course that was before he graduated and left Evansville for the actor's life in New York and, eventually, in Los Angeles where he landed a starring role in the television series, “Barney Miller.”
Eventually, I ended up living in Evansville. The how and why of that is a tale for a winter’s eve around the fire. Suffice to say, for the moment, that the circumstances were messy. Full of high drama…which, for me, during those days, most likely meant I was running from something. I was. In fact, I was running from several things. All at the same time. And Evansville looked like a convenient hideout.
(I’ll let you in on just a few tidbits to keep you interested and tempt you to read more in Mee Street II when that book comes out in the future.)
By the time I got around to living in Evansville, I was out of graduate school, carrying a torch for a woman named Stacey, trying to find my balance, bewildered and lost because Mama had died and Daddy had remarried. (His new wife and I never saw eye to eye though that didn’t keep me from going home from time to time.)
I mention all this to say that by the time I stumbled out of graduate school, I was broken-hearted, grieving, rudderless, and entirely without focus or direction. My mother was no longer around to point me in a direction she thought I ought to go. Which meant that I was without the navigator I’d always depended on. The love of my life…the woman whom I had desperately wished to skip down the road of life with was now traveling a path that I could not follow. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I had gotten the requisite degrees. Now, something was supposed to happen. Something like living my life. Something like living happily ever after.
Something like getting a job. But what kind? Where? And how? While I was in my last semester of graduate school, somebody said something about a job referral bank on campus. I checked it out. There was a teaching position in Ohio at Wilberforce College and I had experience with teaching in college. I was teaching, while getting my Master's, as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the English Department at I.U.
So. Okay, I said to myself. I’ll apply. But I needed a resume. A soror helped me piece one together. We didn’t exactly know what we were doing and we didn’t know anybody to ask about these things but we muddled through. WE put it together and I mailed it off. Then, I waited. And waited. And waited. And started to panic. School was ending in sixty days and I didn’t have any place to go. Didn’t have a job.
My brain had gone into meltdown mode and I couldn’t figure out what to do. All I could think was that everyone I had loved had gone away from me. I didn’t know how to handle the emotions…the grief. They were raging inside me. Mama was dead. Stacey had kicked me to the curb. Daddy had married a woman who was…well, let’s just say he deserved better. (But I don't think he knew that.)
So I couldn’t go home. Wouldn’t.
Then, I visited Evansville. And while visiting that first time, I saw Evansville College. It was a nice little campus. Postage stamp small compared to the leviathan, Indiana University. It was suggested that I apply there for a teaching position. I did. They had absolutely no faculty or staff of color. And the pressure was on, by the late sixties, to hire a Black face. They hired mine. I became the first Black, full-time (but not tenure track) instructor there. They gave me a year to year contract. No security in the contract but I didn’t understand the ins and outs of all that anyway. I grabbed the offer.
And so began my deep, long sleep in a cave called Evansville, Indiana. A sleep that was full shadows and specters pale as death. A sleep always haunted by nightmares. A sleep that went on for fourteen-years.
(end)
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Retrospective Series 2: Anthem
Copyright 1980- All Rights Reserved
Note: This piece was originally written and published in September 1980.
There is an ancient Greek myth about a monster called Medusa—who had snakes instead of hair growing from her head and whose face was so horrible, so terrifying, so repulsive that anyone who dared look upon it was instantly turned to stone.
That legend captures the way I used to feel about death. I’d always backed away in terror and dread from the Reaper. Thinking it an abomination. Thinking it a jeering, pitiless specter that mocked the very essence of life. I thought of death that way until the time that fast, black train boarded someone dearest to me in all the world.
When that happened, the ground under my feet shook and slid away…the bottom fell out. And I knew I had to confront the enigma of death, look it full in the face—because my life depended on it.
It has been said that death and life are twins born of yet unfathomed mysteries in the womb of time. Death and life, two sides of the same coin, bound together like beginnings and endings, a continuum whose parts cannot be separated.
A beginning for me was in 1967 when I came to Evansville, Indiana. At 23, I hardly knew anything of Black pain, Black survival, the Black streets. I understood nothing, then, of the Black, smiling faces masking festering wounds. Understood nothing of standing in unemployment lines stretching around the block; of dodging the rent man ‘cause you got laid off last week and the rent’s due today; of kissing up to Miss Ann at the Welfare Office for food stamps; of the ritual of last hired and first fired. Understood nothing of smashed hopes struggling to live anyway in back alley crap games; of the eternal dream of hitting the numbers for two thousand; of sudden violence waiting at the next corner; of Blue Monday at the joints—laughing to keep from crying, or fighting cause you’re too damn mean to cry; of searching for someone on Saturday night to please, God, give you hard loving and make the night sweet as blackberry wine. Understood nothing of what did I do to be so Black and Blue?
I had yet to taste, in those days, the bittersweet juices of living the Black life—and surviving. For I had not yet found myself trapped. I had yet to hear the underbelly of the blues whispering to me about the bitchiness of a lady called life and the odds of getting over with her. I had yet to come eyeball to eyeball with the truth: You live for today ‘cause tomorrow ain’t promised.
I understood none of these things when I came to Evansville. Nor had I found the precious legacy of Black folk which had been hidden away behind Hollywood mirrors, at the bottom of politicians’ trunks filled with smoky illusions, in the dusty, spider-webbed basements where historians had, fearfully, buried it. The paradox and genius—the essence, the spirit and legacy of ordinary, everyday Black folk had not been my teacher. And at 23, I did not understand it. Not then.
While he lived, Ronald Lee Johnson was, in a very real way, my mentor. Was a man who taught me, by his example, about the Black life. And now his death, though it seems a useless and wasteful one, is teaching me even more. Now, as I try to tally up the things, the events, the people who have influenced my life most deeply, changed it most profoundly—now, in all honesty, I have to admit that what has caused me pain and what has nurtured me must be given equal weight. Both are intertwined. Both are father and mother to the person that I am. For you cannot grow without pain and joy, without setbacks and encouragements, without endings—which are, in themselves, beginnings.
In the thirteen years I’ve lived in Evansville, I’ve seen the complexity, the toughness, the brilliance of the Black spirit. I’ve witnessed the courage, the laughter, and the tears—the resiliency that makes Black folks who they are. I understand, now, that the blues and the spirituals are not divorced from each other, but are one and the same: songs celebrating life. And I have finally seen that nothing is constant. Everything is risk. And perhaps our only hope in this life is sharing and giving love.
Sudden death is no stranger to Black folk, and my anthem is not the first written for a man who was gentle of spirit and who died before he could grow old. From the beginning, Black people learn to live on the cutting edge—with death lurking just beyond the shadows, with promise and despair hovering just above the head and heart. Our lives smolder with the possibilities of hope and despair. Our lives—like a splendid, but tattered cloth—are weaved of light and dark. Of dreams, needs, and disappointments. Of blemishes and of perfections. Our lives are shot through with gold and dross, with midnight tears and noonday laughter, with the copper taste of blood-pounding rage, and the sweet, night-smell of jasmine. Our lives are a testament to the circle of life, affirming its balance, its unity—recognizing no separation in the contradictions of life, recognizing that there are no beginnings without endings, no loving without hurting, no up without down, no life without death.
And so, now, I write a testament, an anthem to my friend who was a Black man. My friend who was of the light and dark. My friend who was a human being—indefinable, unpredictable, ambiguous, paradoxical—a man of tremendous complexity, just as we are. And like us, he was something of a mystery: bewildering, frightening, magical. A delightful tease. A salty pirate. An old-fashioned romantic. A man who tilted at windmills. A human being who saw his own shortcomings and who doubted himself.
Yet, perhaps one can fathom the mystery of a man through those who loved him through those who walked the lifelong miles beside him. Through those to whom he told his dreams. Through those to whom he gave the gift of himself.
For, in the end, it is not a man’s weaknesses, his transgressions, or his faltering steps that he is judged by. A man is judged by those whose lives he touched… and who grew because of it.
(end)
Note: This piece was originally written and published in September 1980.
There is an ancient Greek myth about a monster called Medusa—who had snakes instead of hair growing from her head and whose face was so horrible, so terrifying, so repulsive that anyone who dared look upon it was instantly turned to stone.
That legend captures the way I used to feel about death. I’d always backed away in terror and dread from the Reaper. Thinking it an abomination. Thinking it a jeering, pitiless specter that mocked the very essence of life. I thought of death that way until the time that fast, black train boarded someone dearest to me in all the world.
When that happened, the ground under my feet shook and slid away…the bottom fell out. And I knew I had to confront the enigma of death, look it full in the face—because my life depended on it.
It has been said that death and life are twins born of yet unfathomed mysteries in the womb of time. Death and life, two sides of the same coin, bound together like beginnings and endings, a continuum whose parts cannot be separated.
A beginning for me was in 1967 when I came to Evansville, Indiana. At 23, I hardly knew anything of Black pain, Black survival, the Black streets. I understood nothing, then, of the Black, smiling faces masking festering wounds. Understood nothing of standing in unemployment lines stretching around the block; of dodging the rent man ‘cause you got laid off last week and the rent’s due today; of kissing up to Miss Ann at the Welfare Office for food stamps; of the ritual of last hired and first fired. Understood nothing of smashed hopes struggling to live anyway in back alley crap games; of the eternal dream of hitting the numbers for two thousand; of sudden violence waiting at the next corner; of Blue Monday at the joints—laughing to keep from crying, or fighting cause you’re too damn mean to cry; of searching for someone on Saturday night to please, God, give you hard loving and make the night sweet as blackberry wine. Understood nothing of what did I do to be so Black and Blue?
I had yet to taste, in those days, the bittersweet juices of living the Black life—and surviving. For I had not yet found myself trapped. I had yet to hear the underbelly of the blues whispering to me about the bitchiness of a lady called life and the odds of getting over with her. I had yet to come eyeball to eyeball with the truth: You live for today ‘cause tomorrow ain’t promised.
I understood none of these things when I came to Evansville. Nor had I found the precious legacy of Black folk which had been hidden away behind Hollywood mirrors, at the bottom of politicians’ trunks filled with smoky illusions, in the dusty, spider-webbed basements where historians had, fearfully, buried it. The paradox and genius—the essence, the spirit and legacy of ordinary, everyday Black folk had not been my teacher. And at 23, I did not understand it. Not then.
While he lived, Ronald Lee Johnson was, in a very real way, my mentor. Was a man who taught me, by his example, about the Black life. And now his death, though it seems a useless and wasteful one, is teaching me even more. Now, as I try to tally up the things, the events, the people who have influenced my life most deeply, changed it most profoundly—now, in all honesty, I have to admit that what has caused me pain and what has nurtured me must be given equal weight. Both are intertwined. Both are father and mother to the person that I am. For you cannot grow without pain and joy, without setbacks and encouragements, without endings—which are, in themselves, beginnings.
In the thirteen years I’ve lived in Evansville, I’ve seen the complexity, the toughness, the brilliance of the Black spirit. I’ve witnessed the courage, the laughter, and the tears—the resiliency that makes Black folks who they are. I understand, now, that the blues and the spirituals are not divorced from each other, but are one and the same: songs celebrating life. And I have finally seen that nothing is constant. Everything is risk. And perhaps our only hope in this life is sharing and giving love.
Sudden death is no stranger to Black folk, and my anthem is not the first written for a man who was gentle of spirit and who died before he could grow old. From the beginning, Black people learn to live on the cutting edge—with death lurking just beyond the shadows, with promise and despair hovering just above the head and heart. Our lives smolder with the possibilities of hope and despair. Our lives—like a splendid, but tattered cloth—are weaved of light and dark. Of dreams, needs, and disappointments. Of blemishes and of perfections. Our lives are shot through with gold and dross, with midnight tears and noonday laughter, with the copper taste of blood-pounding rage, and the sweet, night-smell of jasmine. Our lives are a testament to the circle of life, affirming its balance, its unity—recognizing no separation in the contradictions of life, recognizing that there are no beginnings without endings, no loving without hurting, no up without down, no life without death.
And so, now, I write a testament, an anthem to my friend who was a Black man. My friend who was of the light and dark. My friend who was a human being—indefinable, unpredictable, ambiguous, paradoxical—a man of tremendous complexity, just as we are. And like us, he was something of a mystery: bewildering, frightening, magical. A delightful tease. A salty pirate. An old-fashioned romantic. A man who tilted at windmills. A human being who saw his own shortcomings and who doubted himself.
Yet, perhaps one can fathom the mystery of a man through those who loved him through those who walked the lifelong miles beside him. Through those to whom he told his dreams. Through those to whom he gave the gift of himself.
For, in the end, it is not a man’s weaknesses, his transgressions, or his faltering steps that he is judged by. A man is judged by those whose lives he touched… and who grew because of it.
(end)
Friday, September 28, 2007
Love Song V: Conjurer
Conjurer
Copyright 2007- All Rights Reserved
speak
my name
and
let
wind
rise
restless
whipping
slipping
through tops
of trees
summoned
invoked
by
you
say
my name
whisper it
to
the
wind
send it
into
ripples
of
air
to
ride
across
the
sky
like sails
full blown
carrying
precious cargo
conjure
wind
conjure
gods
of air
implore them
entreat them
beseech them
bring
me
to you
stir
bird wings
stir
shadowed mist
stir
old bones
and
bid me
come
to
you
bid me
rise
like smoke
to
crisscross
treetops
peaks
cloud banks
rise
on
filaments
of
your
breath
rise
on
whirl winds
trade winds
rise
fly…
and
come.
9/27/07
Copyright 2007- All Rights Reserved
speak
my name
and
let
wind
rise
restless
whipping
slipping
through tops
of trees
summoned
invoked
by
you
say
my name
whisper it
to
the
wind
send it
into
ripples
of
air
to
ride
across
the
sky
like sails
full blown
carrying
precious cargo
conjure
wind
conjure
gods
of air
implore them
entreat them
beseech them
bring
me
to you
stir
bird wings
stir
shadowed mist
stir
old bones
and
bid me
come
to
you
bid me
rise
like smoke
to
crisscross
treetops
peaks
cloud banks
rise
on
filaments
of
your
breath
rise
on
whirl winds
trade winds
rise
fly…
and
come.
9/27/07
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Love Song: IV - Sea Change: Summer of 2007
Sea Change: Summer of 2007
Copyright 2007-All Rights Reserved
your lodestar
shifted
the angle
of the sun
bent
the radius
of my perspective
folded
linear time
past
present
future
into
triangled planes
while
your
moon power
raised
sublime
possibilities
exponentially
placing them
just
there
above
my horizon…
your force
disturbed
the poles
of
my world
charged
changed
their
magnetic direction
while
like
a riptide
you
pulled
my sea
into
to your
sphere
displacing
my currents
drawing
my tides
skyward
to
arc
upward
evermore
to
you…
your moon
imploded
the mysteries
of you
of me
of us
together
shooting us
like stars
somewhere far…near…
somewhere
into
parallel universes
where
the equation
of us
burst
into fire
and sparks
and
circles
unbroken
without end
or beginning…
circles
spinning
out
beyond
eternity.
9/15/07
Copyright 2007-All Rights Reserved
your lodestar
shifted
the angle
of the sun
bent
the radius
of my perspective
folded
linear time
past
present
future
into
triangled planes
while
your
moon power
raised
sublime
possibilities
exponentially
placing them
just
there
above
my horizon…
your force
disturbed
the poles
of
my world
charged
changed
their
magnetic direction
while
like
a riptide
you
pulled
my sea
into
to your
sphere
displacing
my currents
drawing
my tides
skyward
to
arc
upward
evermore
to
you…
your moon
imploded
the mysteries
of you
of me
of us
together
shooting us
like stars
somewhere far…near…
somewhere
into
parallel universes
where
the equation
of us
burst
into fire
and sparks
and
circles
unbroken
without end
or beginning…
circles
spinning
out
beyond
eternity.
9/15/07
Monday, September 10, 2007
Love Song III: Empath (for ND)
Love Song III: Empath (for N.D.)
Copyright 2007-All Rights Reserved
gather
the pieces of your wounds
packed neatly in dusty attic boxes
swept carefully under the kitchen rug
dropped haphazardly in bedroom corners
gather the pieces
like hard candies…
wounds
alive
denied
but never
forgotten
gather
the days of your pain
the days
liquid-red
once bloody
and throbbing
now years-hardened
into stiff
brown streaks
lying in bottoms of coffee cups…
gather
the leftover
signs
of hurts
yet denied
but alive
and well
gather
your night terrors
strung together
and hanging
about your neck
like
a noose of pearls
strangling
all breath
cutting off
all life
terrors denied
but still alive
still
well
gather them all now
and
bring them…
wounds, pain, terrors…
press them
etch them
release them
into
onto
me…
for I am your empath
your empath
wounded…
as your scars become mine
your empath
broken…
on the wheel of your pain
your empath
tormented…
by demons of your nights
I am your empath
I am
a balm
to restore
an elixir
to heal
I am your empath
come now
to you
with love
unconditional…
your empath
come
gladly here
with love
for you.
9/9/07
Copyright 2007-All Rights Reserved
gather
the pieces of your wounds
packed neatly in dusty attic boxes
swept carefully under the kitchen rug
dropped haphazardly in bedroom corners
gather the pieces
like hard candies…
wounds
alive
denied
but never
forgotten
gather
the days of your pain
the days
liquid-red
once bloody
and throbbing
now years-hardened
into stiff
brown streaks
lying in bottoms of coffee cups…
gather
the leftover
signs
of hurts
yet denied
but alive
and well
gather
your night terrors
strung together
and hanging
about your neck
like
a noose of pearls
strangling
all breath
cutting off
all life
terrors denied
but still alive
still
well
gather them all now
and
bring them…
wounds, pain, terrors…
press them
etch them
release them
into
onto
me…
for I am your empath
your empath
wounded…
as your scars become mine
your empath
broken…
on the wheel of your pain
your empath
tormented…
by demons of your nights
I am your empath
I am
a balm
to restore
an elixir
to heal
I am your empath
come now
to you
with love
unconditional…
your empath
come
gladly here
with love
for you.
9/9/07
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Love Song II: Pied Piper
Copyright 2007 – All Rights Reserved
ain’t no turnin back now.
you
beckoned
you
summoned
you compelled me
to follow you...to play
my role in
this here love story
where there ain’t no script.
well,
never mind that...
since ain’t no turnin back now.
you
set the stage
you
cued me
you
figured out how to get me
and here I am
standing center stage
with no lines
with no directions
with no blocking
for my moves.
well,
never mind that now...
cause ain’t no turnin back, my love.
ain’t no turnin me back
ain’t no turnin me round
ain’t no turnin us off this road we on...
cause
the curtain's already up
and the house lights are down
sho' nuff rehearsal is over
and, baby, this show
is already
all the way
ON.
8/3/2007 and 9/5/07
ain’t no turnin back now.
you
beckoned
you
summoned
you compelled me
to follow you...to play
my role in
this here love story
where there ain’t no script.
well,
never mind that...
since ain’t no turnin back now.
you
set the stage
you
cued me
you
figured out how to get me
and here I am
standing center stage
with no lines
with no directions
with no blocking
for my moves.
well,
never mind that now...
cause ain’t no turnin back, my love.
ain’t no turnin me back
ain’t no turnin me round
ain’t no turnin us off this road we on...
cause
the curtain's already up
and the house lights are down
sho' nuff rehearsal is over
and, baby, this show
is already
all the way
ON.
8/3/2007 and 9/5/07
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Love Song I: Lyric 2 (To Stacey)
Copyright 2007 – All Rights Reserved
Lyric 2
(To Stacey)
play goodbye
frankie
drop
a coin or two in the box
and
say
goodbye
play it now
frankie
listen
to
the
blues
the muse
the song
that
tells you
why
you
have to
say
play
goodbye
no
you never
wanted
to say it
but
play it
now
while evening dusk
fades
into
night
so lonely so blue
play it
now
while she haunts
the heart
the soul
of
you
play your last
frankie
the die is cast
frankie
go on
say
your
last goodbye
and soon
god please
make it soon
soon
you won’t
remember
soon
you won’t
forget
soon
you won’t
hear
the sounds
of
her
spinning
round in your head
the sounds of her
spinning
round
go on
drop a coin
frankie
then
you can
forget
the lyric
yes
drop a coin
so you can
forget
the melody
drop a coin
so you won’t
forget
the song of her
say it
say
goodbye
because
you will never
ever
play it
because
you could never
ever
say
never
tell her
goodbye.
8/28/07
Lyric 2
(To Stacey)
play goodbye
frankie
drop
a coin or two in the box
and
say
goodbye
play it now
frankie
listen
to
the
blues
the muse
the song
that
tells you
why
you
have to
say
play
goodbye
no
you never
wanted
to say it
but
play it
now
while evening dusk
fades
into
night
so lonely so blue
play it
now
while she haunts
the heart
the soul
of
you
play your last
frankie
the die is cast
frankie
go on
say
your
last goodbye
and soon
god please
make it soon
soon
you won’t
remember
soon
you won’t
forget
soon
you won’t
hear
the sounds
of
her
spinning
round in your head
the sounds of her
spinning
round
go on
drop a coin
frankie
then
you can
forget
the lyric
yes
drop a coin
so you can
forget
the melody
drop a coin
so you won’t
forget
the song of her
say it
say
goodbye
because
you will never
ever
play it
because
you could never
ever
say
never
tell her
goodbye.
8/28/07
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